Infidelity - The Shock of Discovery

Infidelity - The Shock of Discovery

Infidelity - The Shock of Discovery

I
couldn't breathe, I felt lightheaded, I think that my heart actually stopped for
a moment. This is what I was feeling as I read the email. It described in excruciating
detail, my wife's real life encounter with one of her cyberlovers, Patrick. He
talked about the passion he had never felt before and about the true love they
pledged to each other. Patrick and I shared something else too...

Continued
Below

The
Shock of DiscoveryWebmaster,
Chatcheaters.com

Continued
from above...

We
both had no idea that Vivian was planning to leave in a few days, without so much
as a note or email, for yet another cyber lover.

Weeks passed
before the police informed me that my now ex-wife had left the country voluntarily. Patrick
had finally gotten the nerve up to call and ask me if he could talk to Vivian.
Before that, he had just kept calling and hanging up. I had the perverse pleasure
of "shocking" him back, when I told him that she had left him too...
for another stranger that she had met online. He was as stunned as I was.

What
could make a person leave their spouse, their children AND their lover? Mid-life
crisis? Maybe. But I place full blame on the cybering, which is why I started
this web site. I could certainly understand my ex leaving me after 23 years of
marriage. I was not a perfect husband. But it was the fact that she left her two
girls just as coldly, that persuaded me to look for other causes. Our children
were 16 and 18 at the time, but their relationship with their mother was as special
and loving as one would expect between a mother and her daughters.

It has been over 4 years since that day and
I have never heard a
single word from her. That's okay, I'm over it. She just
recently started contacting our daughters, but only
occasionally. This is fortunate, because every time she calls
them, they have to relive the experience over again and try to
make sense of it. That their mother CHOSE to leave them for a
man she had never even met. To go to a place so far away, that
being there for them when they need her is not an option. They are the
true victims in this instance of internet infidelity.

If
you have a cyber cheater and they try and convince you it is just a harmless fantasy,
please consider the potentially devastating results. Put a stop to it... immediately!

Traumatic events such as natural disasters and
criminal attacks shatter our assumptions about our sense of safety in the world.
In a similar way, the discovery of infidelity is devastating because it shatters
basic assumptions about the security we expect in committed relationships.

Healing from adultery first
requires that the betrayed spouse recover from the trauma.Greg Swenson, Ph.D.

Discovering the betrayal and anticipating the potential loss of the person most
important in your life causes great distress. Unlike the trauma of death, which
has an end and can be compensated for by positive elements in the relationship,
infidelity undermines all that is good in the relationship and the pain seems to
have no natural end point.

When
an extramarital affair is discovered, often the couple will undergo a crisis.
This may not sound surprising. However, this crisis can be the most difficult
part of the issue. The "injured" spouse may feel emotionally abandoned
by the other spouse. She or he may feel a loss of her/his image of marriage, of
her/his marriage...

The
Impact of Discovery American
Association for Marriage and Family Therapy

It
is common for both spouses to experience depression (including suicidal thoughts),
anxiety, and/or a profound sense of loss following the initial disclosure. The
reactions of the betrayed spouse resemble the post-traumatic stress symptoms of
the victims of catastrophic events.

Common
reactions to the loss of innocence and shattered assumptions include obsessively
pondering details of the affair; continuously watching for further signs of betrayal;
and physiological hyperarousal, flashbacks and intrusive images.

Five
years ago, Amanda*, aged 36 years, found out, to her dismay, that her husband
of ten years was having an affair with a younger woman. The fact that her husband
and his mistress had been going on overseas travels together and gone on several
holidays nearly crushed her, and were it not for psychiatric help and counseling,
Amanda believes she would have gone mad.